Now that you know the what and why of a CTA, let’s look at a bunch of hows.

13 tips for writing effective CTAs for social media

Poor converting CTAs are frustrating. You use them to promote your products and services, which you’ve spent a long time developing, right?

But don’t panic.

They’re easy to fix.

You just need some good advice, like below.

Then, it’s up to you to apply some digital-elbow-grease. Here ya go…

1. Just sell

Don’t be wimpy about asking for the order.

You don’t need to go all Anthony Robbins on your CTAs. Sure, gorilla marketing doesn’t fit you. But hey, you’re in business to sell.

Get past your inner “I-don’t-want-come-off-as-salesy” and ask viewers to take an intended and specific action.

They’re expecting it. Give them what they want.

2. Compel readers to take action

Because just sharing is not the purpose of your post, page, or email.

You want them to take action.

Like, buy, call, or click, right?

For example… Download my full-throttle guide. Click to join the revolt. Contact me to learn how you can go “ching-ching” for your business. Reserve your spot for our seminar. 401+ power words to consider.

3. Urgency matters, too

A rewrite from one of the items above…

Reserve your spot today for our seminar—before it fills up.

Limiting time usually entices users to respond more to CTAs.

‘Call us today’ works better than ‘Call us’. It implies urgency and immediacy.

12. Mix it up

…by testing different CTAs.

CTAs are measurable. You can count the clicks. And should.

So you can tweak and see what works best for various CTAs.

If your content is getting more than 1,000 impressions, then give A/B testing a try. Change colors, change text, move the CTA around on the page and measure what works best. Keep refining and polishing.

Unbounce did. They changed a CTA from “start your free 30-day trial period” to “start my free 30-day trial period.” A simple adjustment to a single word resulted in 90 percent more clicks.

Impressive, no?

13. Make it personal

Using ‘you’ (and ‘yours’) makes readers feel like you care.

And more like a conversation, not a sales pitch.

More instances of ‘you’ than words like ‘we’, ‘our’, and ‘us’ helps readers focus on your message. Or ‘my,’ as in the Unbounce example above.

5 CTAs in action

How about a few kick-butt examples before you leave? Inspiration for using your new CTA superpowers.

1. Salesforce

There’s that word again in the CTA, ‘my’. You can bet Salesforce has done loads of testing with their pages to learn what works best. And, they have two primary CTAs followed by a secondary one, ‘WATCH DEMO’, for users not quite ready yet.

2. Evernote

“Feel organized without the effort”: a message easy to understand. Immediately. Followed up by a short description and a strong and simple CTA. All this makes it easy for readers to ‘get it’ and how their life will improve.

3. Dropbox

Dropbox gets right to it. Just text and color. With a sign up form right there. There’s no doubt this is what Dropbox wants their site visitors to do first. And if they don’t want to, they can scroll down the page to see all their secondary CTAs. Persistence often pays.

4. Netflix

Netflix makes it easy for users to feel safe in trying out their service, in seconds. “Try it, you’ll like it.” And if not, no problem. Cancel as fast as you signed up. It doesn’t get much simpler than this, all with a few lines of text, and a big, bold CTA.

5. Prezi

Another minimalist design. With so much white space, the text and CTAs stand out. Another example of a simple message, this time, letting the user know they don’t have to be a designer to design a great looking presentation. Their primary CTA is to get people to see how Prezi works. Clicking on this CTA educates them. Then, they’ll see the ‘Try it for free CTA’, which shows them pricing information. A carefully crafted funnel.

What next?

Jump in and create, alter or redesign your CTA buttons, images and links.

Keep this post nearby to get more users to take more actions for your social posts and pages. As a rule of thumb, know that a good CTA answers two questions for the reader, “What’s next?” and “Why should I?”

Want more tips for creating compelling social media content? Sure you do.

No matter what action you’re hoping to drive with your social media posts Hootsuite can help. Easily schedule and share your social CTAs across networks. Try it free today.